


Seeing Things

by lunabee34 (Lorraine)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Death Fix, Episode: s01e22 Devil's Trap, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-27
Updated: 2014-03-27
Packaged: 2018-01-17 06:20:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1377064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lorraine/pseuds/lunabee34
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if Ava dreams about the Winchesters long before "Hunted?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Seeing Things

“Hi! I’m Ava Joel Osment. I see dead people. Before they die.” She shakes her head. “Oh, yeah. That’ll go over fan-freaking-tastic. Okay. So, I have these dreams sometimes. That come true. And I dreamed last night that you died.” Ava unbuckles her safety belt and slides out of her car. She’s halfway to the door of the cabin when she hears gunshot, a sharp and brittle sound that splits the night clean open. “On second thought, maybe you deserve to die,” she says, turning back to her Bug and wishing she’d worn sneakers instead of these stupid boots with the slick soles.

Ava’s got her fingers wrapped around the door handle when he grabs her, the blunt end of a pistol pressing into her lower back, and she has an almost irrepressible urge to say, “So it _is_ a gun in your pocket,” but she breathes really fast through her nose until it passes. The guy spins her around and he’s freakishly tall; she couldn’t tell that from the dream. There, he was keeled over in the driver’s seat, very pale, very still and looking very small through the cracked glass. Behind him, an older man leans in the doorway of the cabin, favoring the leg that’s bloody from the knee down. He’s also holding a gun—this long, slender bit of steel that Ava might call sexy if it wasn’t pointed at her. Good to know her middle school crush on Kiefer “Doc” Sutherland is still going strong. Through the open door, Ava can see the third guy, the one with the short hair and the uber-jaw, curled up on the floor and clutching at his middle. 

“Who are you?” Tall Guy says, his grip on her forearm bruising.

“My name’s Ava, and I’m here to help you.” She uses the voice she reserves for Dr. Carlton’s ultra-damaged clients, the ones that shuffle into his waiting room with their wrists taped and their faces gaunt from not eating. “Sometimes my dreams come true, and I know it sounds crazy, but those guys with you are gonna die in a car crash. Tonight.”

Tall Guy purses his lips and shakes his head. “You gotta be kidding me,” he says. “We don’t have time for this now. We have to get the hospital.” He manhandles Ava over to the sleek little black number they’re driving and pops the trunk.

“Holy weapons stockpile, Batman, that’s a lot of guns,” Ava says, much louder than she’d intended. 

Tall Guy squirts her with water like he expects her to melt, Wicked Witch of the West style, and about the time he starts chanting something that sounds like, “Crease-Toe,” Ava decides that whoever said ESP is a gift clearly never found himself in the middle of fucking nowhere with these freaks. Old Guy’s hobbled to the car at this point, and whatever the hell Tall Guy’s doing, she seems to have passed muster because he lowers the gun. “Put her in the car, Dad,” he says. “I’ll get Dean.” 

Ava climbs in without much fuss; she figures they’re less likely to shoot her in there anyway. Ava knows boys and their toys and whichever guy this baby belongs to probably isn’t keen on picking her brains out of the upholstery for the next week or so. She hopes. They drive for a few minutes in silence until Ava feels compelled to point out that as she’s riding shotgun, that big rig’s gonna plow right into her window. “You have to believe me. My dreams come true, and I saw your dad and Dean die.”

“Have you always had prophetic dreams?” Tall Guy asks.

“No,” Ava says. “They started about a year ago.”

Tall Guy shares a Very Significant Look with Dad in the rearview. “When were you born?” he says.

“1983. What’s that got to do with anything?” CCR kicks on and Ava panics. “You have to pull over now! This is the song that’s playing when you crash. Please!” Ava sees headlights closing in the distance and she grabs the steering wheel from Tall Guy, swerves. The car whips around and around, finally settling into a lazy spin on the shoulder. When the car stops, the eighteen wheeler’s turned up on the other side of the road, its load of boxes swung in a wide arc across the blacktop.

Tall Guy slides out of the car, cocking his gun as he goes and Ava follows him as far as the wheel ruts at the edge of the shoulder where the gravel turns to grass. She can just barely see the driver sitting up unnaturally straight in the small space left between the steering column and the seat, and then his head throws back, ribbons of blackness rising up from the cab, god from his mouth, just like a special effect in _Spawn_. Except this is real life and not the movies. Tall Guy searches for a pulse on the truck driver, but apparently finds none. Ava walks back to the car, Tall Guy a few steps behind her, and when they’ve both buckled their safety belts again, Dad says, “I’m John Winchester. These are my boys, Sam and Dean. Thank you for saving our lives.”

By the time they reach the ER doors, the Winchesters have established that Ava doesn’t fit the Yellow Eyed Demon’s MO, whatever the hell that is, and Ava feels sick, even sicker than when she thought she was going to die. She can’t get the image of that black cloud, shadow warping and twisting around itself, out of her mind. 

Ava leans against a taupe hospital wall that smells like antiseptic and watches the Winchesters through the glass doors. Two nurses wheel Dean away almost immediately; she can’t hear what Dean says as he goes, but Sam smiles at whatever it is, relaxes a little, and Ava feels like a Peeping Tom when she sees the way Dean’s face tenses with pain the moment the nurses put his back to his brother. John’s stretched out on a gurney, a nurse cutting away his jeans with a pair of scissors before she disappears down the corridor, and the relief on Sam’s face twists to frustration when his father speaks. This conversation Ava can hear through the heavy doors. “Your vendetta’s not worth our lives, Dad!” Sam shouts. Okay, so clearly father issues. 

Sam flings open the doors with such force that the hinges creak. He leans beside her on the wall, breathing heavily, and Ava just lets him be until he’s ready to talk. “We’re all okay. I can take you back to your car now,” he says, eventually.

Ava raises her eyebrows. “Hello? If you think I’m leaving here without Demonology 101, you’re insane.” 

Sam loans her his laptop and Ava types up everything he tells her, salt and iron and holy water, and then emails it to her Yahoo account. When Sam drops her back off at her car, he gives her his cell number and waits to pull away until she’s got the Bug cranked and the wheels to the road. Ava smiles; Sam’s mama apparently raised him right. Two exits before Peoria, she spies a CopyKat in a strip mall and prints out Sam’s Demon Manifesto, even has the pages laminated just in case.

She sleeps for four hours, takes a hot bath, and then drives over to Brady's clapboard. Ava doesn’t know what she expects from her boyfriend, but she knows it isn’t this denial, this insistence that she’s crazy. When he says, “If you wanted out, you could’ve just said instead of making all this crazy shit up,” Ava realizes the decision to keep her visions a secret from everyone, even Brady, was the wrong one. Brady slams the door to his bedroom, and she sees herself out. Ava cries onto her steering wheel for awhile, then squares her shoulders and heads home. She’ll be alright. After all, it’s not like they were engaged or anything.

Much later, when she dreams of a man with yellow eyes who has plans for her, Ava knows just who to call.


End file.
